ARBUTHNOT, ALEXANDER Scottish ec clesiastic and poet, educated at St. Andrews and Bourges, was principal of King's College, Aberdeen, from 1569 until his death. His extant works are (a) three poems, "The Praises of Wemen" (22,4 lines), "On Luve" (10 lines), and "The Miseries of a Pure Scholar" (189 lines), and (b) a Latin account of the Arbuthnot family, Originis et Incrementi Arbuthnoticae Familiae Descriptio Historica (still in ms.), of which an English continuation, by the father of Dr. John Arbuthnot, is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
The particulars of Arbuthnot's life are found in Calderwood, Spot tiswood, and other Church historians, and in Scott's Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae. The poems are printed in Pinkerton's Ancient Scottish Poems (1786) , i. pp.